Crux Answers the Call: Gimme Mo

For Crux Fermentation Project, the Gimme Mo’ IPA is just that. A juicy, sessionable India Pale Ale intended to stand out from the deeply saturated Bend, Oregon market.

And it does that subtly and effectively.

Gimme Mo’ offers juicy melon, a tropical fruit backbone and some pine. It’s aromatic, it’s sweet and it’s not clubbing you over the head with hop acid.

Crux works best when dealing with mixed-fermentation and barrel aging (such as with the fantastic [Banished] series, with barrel-aged Oud Bruin, Flanders Red and Imperial Stout-style beers), but still keeps things tasty and light with its standard, year-round beers.

Crux opened in 2012 thanks to the efforts of Larry Sidor, Paul Evers and Dave Wilson, who purchased an old lumber supply building in an industrial part of Bend. They bought equipment from a defunct Japanese brewer and converted the industrial warehouse into a sleek tasting room with acres of land outside for the Bend summer crush.

The brewery is inescapably popular in Central Oregon and beyond, with throngs of tourist ski bums and locals alike packing the taproom as the sun sets behind Mt. Bachelor and the Three Sisters just to the west.

The aroma is alive with tropical fruits.”

While Half Hitch and Cast Out might be more accurately called Crux’s “flagship” IPAs, neither are as approachable as Gimme Mo’.

It pours with a thick khaki head and takes its sweet time settling down to the translucent goldenrod body. It’s lightly carbonated, but leaves sticky lacing on the way down.

Gimme Mo’s description on the royal purple encourages drinkers to “consider it a next generation IPA.”

Yeah, it’s marketing, but the beer admittedly does provide juicy melon and berries flavors at the front of the mouth while finishing with a hint of pine. It’s heavy-bodied for an IPA, and does have 6.2% alcohol by volume, so it’s not something most people are going to drink a six-pack of. It’s sweeter than I expected/remembered from a beer-soaked day in the sun touring Bend’s core breweries.

The aroma is alive with tropical fruits. Mango in particular. The backbone of Gimme Mo’ are the ever-popular citra and mosaic hops, and those are present in the citrusy, somewhat astringent nature of the aroma. It also shows off some delicate blueberry notes with just a hint of grass and cat piss.

Beneath the floral, fruity hops is an acidulated pilsner malt bill which adds some lightness to what could otherwise be a darker fruit-driven IPA. It tastes like its 50 IBUs, with no overtly bitter hops but just enough to turn off lupulinaphobes

As mentioned above, it is thick in body, so a complete mouthfeel is present from the first sip.

Crux makes much better beers. It also makes beers that don’t really stack up to Gimme Mo’. As a result, drinkers with a taste for luscious hops without the bitter mouthpaint of high alpha acids will find a winner in the IPA.

Those with a more adventurous palate might find it boring. Try the Freakcake, a barrel-aged Oud Bruin with Brettanomyces, or the Doublecross Dark Belgian-Style Ale.

Better yet, go bask in the sun in Bend and try all of Crux Fermentation Project’s beers.